Monday, May 30, 2011

The Basin Track

Lambertia formosa IMG_4508
Lambertia formosa

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Acacia suaveolens

Female casuarina IMG_4525
Female casuarina against the sky

E.haemastoma IMG_4580
Scribbly gum, E. haemastoma

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An unidentified flower

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An unidentified flower

Despite the rain, or perhaps because of it, the colours seemed very true for these flowers. The mountain devils were a rare and striking red amidst their soft grey foliage. Coming up the path, the first flower I noticed was a Banksia spinulosa with its lovely black stigmas edging the bright orange of the flower and then the somewhat bedraggled Acacia suaveolens with the rhythm of its phyllodes against the soft white flower heads. Photographing it, you notice that the smooth edges of the phyllodes are translucent.

The red and grey spider flowers (Grevilleas) were flowering and the grey spider flower was striking with its flowers atop its stalks, and there was a hakea, common as dirt, no doubt, but flowering too with tiny flowers all along its stems and huge woody knobbly seed heads.

I put in the photo of the scribbly gum because of the beautiful red of its stalks. It too, was flowering. In the rain, its flowers always remind me of Little Ragged Blossom.

Not surprisingly, I saw two flowers I had never seen before. Never seen before, since in both cases the flower was little more than a simple continuation of the foliage, itself largely unremarkable. And I am assuming I had never seen the reddish one before, since I have probably walked on by thinking that the plant was entirely dead or burnt since the entire plant was orange. So easy to pass by and assume familiarity. And equally easy, in my ignorance, to assume that I have never seen it before as I did with a Boronia which had turned to seed.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Working

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My desk in Anne's office. I look out to the rock-face and Cliff street is three storeys above, but we are at street level on the other side.

Rice-paper plant IMG_4325
Rice-paper plant in flower at the top of the Whale Beach steps. I see this plant when I walk to the bus-stop to go to Anne's office in Milsons Point.

But the journey by bus takes forever, and the walk to the bus-stop is over a kilometre, and my pack is heavy. I am not sure how to do this, nor how sustainable it is. I need human company and I am struggling to work at home. Palm Beach currently seems incredibly difficult.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Tony Abbott













"America's Climate Choices" from National Academies Press.

I should be sending this to Tony Abbott. Perhaps he might get serious about climate change.

Blue

Colvillea racemosa IMG_4277
Colvillea racemosa. In the City Botanic Gardens, Brisbane.

Feeling blue. Need some work and more contact with people to drive me to do things.

Checking out some photos on Flickr, I came across this quote "The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera" (Dorothea Lange). BrainyQuotes Which I think is spot on.